alt Hacker NewsAmericans would rather die than give up their air conditioned bubbles on wheels. I've wondered why someone hasn't tried manufacturing an enclosed go kart with AC and enough trunk space for a few groceries.
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Regulation kills the value proposition. You are basically describing a "neighborhood electric vehicle", but US law limits them to 25 mph, and it is not legal to drive them on many arterials, so they are only really useful inside communities which were designed for them.
They really should just open up letting you have a small vehicle everywhere in the country. Sometimes you visit some city or little rural area where they let you drive golf carts or atvs or snow mobiles on the roads, grocery store lots are more full of those instead of bigger vehicles as a result, and the sky doesn't seem to fall down either.
>air conditioned bubbles on wheels.
You say it like its a bad thing.
I get it if you live in a dense metro. A car is not worth it in NYC, SF, etc. Other than that it's pretty abnormal for people not to want a car. It's usually some weird anxiety about driving. Not to mention - heaven forbid - you have a family.
They are very popular in china, such as the Wuling ev. In America, they are afraid of them because they are small. They want big cars to have a large crumple area in a crash.
That’s the smart car
> I've wondered why someone hasn't tried manufacturing an enclosed go kart with AC and enough trunk space for a few groceries.
Because they are completely unsafe against a twice-the-height, multi-ton Ford pickup truck.
> I've wondered why someone hasn't tried manufacturing an enclosed go kart with AC and enough trunk space for a few groceries.
I see these all the time here in the Netherlands. Very small cars. Some on the road and even smaller ones people drive on the bike paths. Small motorized vehicles, ebikes and scooters share the paths with regular bikes which works because they have usually at least two lanes, so they are more like tiny roads. Very handy.